Xandros Desktop--Not Your Father's Linux Distribution - page 3

From Corel to Xandros

November 11, 2002

By
Bill von Hagen

Once you log in and get past the First Run Wizard, using Xandros
Desktop is a breeze. Xandros Desktop is based on the 2.4.19 kernel,
which is quite up-to-date and provides robust support for popular
subsystems such as USB. Xandros uses the devfs filesystem for
populating and managing device entries in /dev, which can be confusing
the first time you execute the df command but provides greater
flexibility for hot-swap devices. Xandros also uses the new "hotplug"
scheme for monitoring and managing hot-swap and removable media
device. Xandros uses LILO rather than GRUB as a boot manager, which is
acceptable but surprisingly dated considering how up-to-the-minute the
rest of Xandros' underpinning are.

Xandros' selection of bundled software is similarly up-to-date.
OpenOffice 1.0.1, Acrobat Reader 5.0, and GIMP 1.2.3 are also
pre-installed in a Complete Install, which also includes pre-installed
IBM Java2-13. All of this contributes to a perception of Xandros
Desktop as an impressively modern and thorough desktop distribution.

Xandros has spent a fair amount of time branding and customizing the
KDE 2.2.2 desktop to differentiate themselves from the pack, which is
probably why they haven't jumped to KDE 3.0 yet. Besides just shuffling
bitmaps, backgrounds, and application title bars, Xandros has
developed a few applications that are Xandros-specific. The Xandros
Update utility (see Figure 1) is Xandros' answer to applications such as Red Hat's
up2date and Ximian's RedCarpet utilities. More impressive than Xandros
Update is the Xandros File Manager, which is slick and multi-function
enough to cause severe application envy in fans of KDE's Konqueror
or GNOME's Nautilus (see Figure 2).

The Xandros File Manager is a filesystem browser, Web browser, Windows
Network and NFS browser, gum, candy, and floorwax all rolled into
one. It is visually attractive, quite fast, and is obviously the
result of a lot of work and love on the part of its authors. Following
the standard two-panel model where the left-hand panel is a
hierarchical table of contents for its key functions and the
right-hand panel displays a view of the selected topic, whether this
is a directory, CD or floppy device, networked Windows or NFS
filesystem, or whatever. Its inclusion of a usable SMB browser for
Windows shares is almost worth the price of admission all by itself.

Given Xandros' desktop orientation, it isn't all that surprising that
gcc is only installed as part of a Custom, Complete Install. What is
more surprising is the version of gcc that is installed, which is
2.95.4. Given the fact that the rest of the software included with
Xandros Desktop is so up-to-date, I would have expected gcc 3.0 or
better, but perhaps this version of gcc is better suited to KDE
2.2.2.

All in all, Xandros Desktop provides an impressive assortment of
modern Linux software oriented toward desktop users. The fact that
things like OpenOffice and Adobe Acrobat Reader are pre-installed is
a great convenience to someone who is more interested in getting work
done out-of-the-box rather than hunting down useful applications.

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